NEED TO KNOW SWEDEN New Song and Dance Last month, Sweden conducted its largest set of war games in two decades, mobilizing some 19,000 troops with support from NATO countries. Normally neutral Sweden hasn't fought a war in centuries and has systematically cut military and defense spending to about...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW GUATEMALA One Comedian, Zero Laughs In 2015, actor and comedian Jimmy Morales won the Guatemalan presidency in a landslide with 67 percent of the vote. His status as a political outsider fueled his cruise to victory after then-President Otto Perez Molina and Vice President Roxana Baldetti,...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW TOGO Of Witchcraft, Protests and WhatsApp The killing of a cow in Kparatao, Togo, explains a lot about the unstable situation in this tiniest of West African countries. Troops loyal to embattled President Faure Gnassingbé were sweeping the village for weapons recently when they shot the...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW MIDDLE EAST Pulling the Tightrope An alliance between Iraq and Iran has long worried American officials. Now the US’s arguably closest ally in the region – Kurdistan – might be the catalyst that unites Baghdad and Tehran. In the wake of 93 percent of Kurdish voters opting...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW NORTH KOREA You Wanna Start Something? The foreign minister of North Korea, Ri Yong Ho, recently told the United Nations General Assembly that a nuclear attack against the United States was “inevitable” if the insults between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, the supreme leader of...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW PORTUGAL No Time To Relax A few years ago, many young Portuguese tried to get out of the country, hungry for opportunities and looking to the former colonies of Angola and Brazil. That's because Portugal was one of the worst hit countries in Europe during the...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW AFGHANISTAN Faltering Spirits There’s grumbling that Afghanistan is becoming America’s second Vietnam – a comparison the Concord Monitor recently made in a column that reads at first like a review of the recently released Ken Burns documentary about the conflict that ran from 1955 to...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW YEMEN Going Nowhere Fast On the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly last week, officials painted a grim picture of the situation in the besieged and poverty-stricken country of Yemen. "The prescription for the future at the very best is bleak," said Jamie McGoldrick, the...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW SPAIN Breaking Up Is Hard To Do With its own language, a history of independence dating back to the Middle Ages, and a thriving economy, the Catalonia region has plenty of reasons to dream about splitting from Spain. But when voters go to the polls for...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW GERMANY Sturm und Drang There were no surprises in German elections Sunday. The earth didn't tremble. The world order remained intact. And yet, there was a seismic shift. Angela Merkel will remain chancellor for another four years, the longest-serving leader in Europe, and the first to lead...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW GERMANY Breaking the Silence The expected lack of a surprise is perhaps the most fascinating aspect of German elections on Sunday. Chancellor Angela Merkel and her conservative Christian Democrats lead their closest competitor, the center-left Social Democrats, by 17 points, all but guaranteeing that Merkel’s party...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW NEW ZEALAND Rock Stars and Maniacs With fewer than 5 million citizens and an isolated location in the southwestern Pacific, New Zealand doesn’t often figure as a major player in global affairs. But the breathtaking island nation has more to offer than top fly-fishing and scenery...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW INDIA Dispel the Darkness Last week, thousands of Indians joined a Nobel-winning advocate of children’s rights for the first leg of what promises to be the world’s largest march against the trafficking and sexual abuse of children. Led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Kailash Satyarthi, the...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW CAMBODIA The Corner, the Bogeyman Authoritarian Prime Minister Hun Sen of Cambodia has been ratcheting up his anti-American rhetoric lately. Most recently, he called on the United States to pull Peace Corps volunteers out of Cambodia after the US embassy issued a warning to Americans traveling...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW KURDISTAN Waiting for a Country Many warned years ago that Iraq could split apart in the wake of the United States toppling ruthless strongman Saddam Hussein. Now, after the American invasion, internecine violence, Iranian intrusions and the rise and fall of the Islamic State, the Kurds...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW MYANMAR Empty Promises After decades of living under the rule of repressive military dictatorship, the southeast Asian nation of Myanmar, also known as Burma, seemed poised to make a relatively peaceful transition to democracy. The nation's military junta dissolved in 2011 after free elections the previous...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW EUROPE Running on Fumes It's been over a year since German automaker Volkswagen had to cough up over $20 billion after being caught red-handed in the US selling diesel vehicles designed to cheat American emissions tests. It was a shocking revelation in Europe, where tax incentives...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW TUNISIA The Second Battle The Arab Spring of 2011 saw entrenched authoritarian regimes across North Africa buckle under the pressure of popular uprisings. Six years later, only in Tunisia, where the Arab Spring began, is there a functioning representative democracy after decades of dictatorship, Stratfor comments. But...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW PUERTO RICO Puerto de Dolor Angry Puerto Ricans have been marching against their government’s plans to hike taxes and cut spending to manage billions in debt that the island is struggling to pay back. "They're taking advantage of us poor workers,” retired 70-year-old government worker Eva...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW NORWAY Both Sides Now Norwegian elections are usually sleepy affairs. Oil makes the country rich. Its generous social welfare state leaves few citizens behind. The largely homogeneous population traditionally eschews radical changes. But as Norwegian voters go to the polls Monday to elect their parliament, many...
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